The word ‘Twitter‘ has been changed to the letter ‘X’, which is preferred by the social media platform’s new owner, Elon Musk, who also controls the aerospace technology business SpaceX.
X is regarded as a distinctive letter in the English alphabet because few words begin with it, similar to letters such as Y, Z, and Q. But, unlike them, when employed to represent anything variable or known, X virtually has another, unlimited identity.
While the letter A serves a similar function at times, its position at the start of the alphabet may explain why it is the first to be chosen when seeking an example. What about X, the 24th letter, which comes in third to last?
Where the letter X might have originated
According to Dictionary.com, the letter X was derived from a Phoenician letter, Phoenician being an ancient language spoken in places bordering the Mediterranean Sea. It represented a harsh S sound, and the Greeks stole this letter called ‘Samekh’ circa 900 BC and christened it ‘Chi’.
This was used to simplify “the digraph (‘a pair of letters representing a single speech sound’) /ks/, which is used most prominently throughout the western regions of Greece,” it adds.
The X sound was later taken by the Romans from the Chalcidian alphabet, a variant of the Greek alphabet. They used the Chi symbol, which consists of two diagonally crossed strokes, to represent the letter X and the Roman numeral X or the number 10.
It is this Greek connection that is also why Christmas is known as Xmas. The website says: “It was first used in the mid-1500s. X represents the Greek letter chi, the initial letter in the word Χριστός (Chrīstos). And what does Χριστός mean? “(Jesus) Christ.” X has been an acceptable representation of the word Christ for hundreds of years.”
The letter’s use demonstrates its breadth of connotations, from sacred to blatant. The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) introduced the X-rating in 1968 to classify films depicting adult-only content, which typically includes explicit language and sexual behavior. The X was chosen to represent the initial syllable of the word ‘ex’plicit or the symbolic use of a cross, signifying a constraint. The adult film business quickly adopted the X-rating, with producers utilizing XXX to promote a picture.
‘X’ represents the unknown
And what about its importance as a mathematical component? According to Peter Schumer, Professor of Mathematics and Natural Philosophy at Middlebury College in the United States, one approach looks at how mathematics evolved across civilizations.
“The theory contends that the Arabic word used for the quantity being sought was al-shayun, meaning “something,” which was shortened to the symbol for its first “sh” sound. When Spanish scholars translated the Arabic mathematical treatises, they lacked a letter for the “sh” sound and instead chose the “k” sound. They represented this sound with the Greek letter χ, which later became the Latin x,” he wrote.
However, he stressed that x was not the only example of an unknown amount, despite its eventual popularity. Schumer proposed that the present use of x was inspired by French mathematician and philosopher René Descartes, writing: “In an appendix to his major work “Discourse” in the 17th century, Descartes introduced a version of analytic geometry – in which algebra is used to solve geometric problems. For unspecified constants, he chose the first few letters of the alphabet, and for variables, he chose the last letters in reverse order.”
The ease of use and politics associated with an X
British author Michael Rosen links the origins of the letter X to the Ancient Romans and Greeks in his book Alphabetical: How Every Letter Tells a Story. He begins a chapter on X by claiming that the letter X is probably unnecessary in the English alphabet. In words like ‘xylophone,’ for example, it can be replaced with a Z.
“Where it has become irreplaceable is when it stands on its own: ‘x’ for a kiss, ‘x’ for the unknown algebra, ‘x’ for multiplication,” and so on, he says.
Exploring the symbolic journey of ‘X’
Rosen points out that the letter’s voyage to the modern world, say, the United States, is also linked to the slave trade, citing notable civil rights leader Malcolm X as an example.
He changed his surname to X because some Black people associated their current surnames with a lack of choice in adopting the names of white ancestors. Black slaves did not have surnames for a long time. Some people avoided it as a result of the fact that their original names were lost when they were dehumanized by being forcibly uprooted from their lives and cultures.
Rosen adds that many of the indentured laborers brought to the United States in the 17th century were uneducated and had to sign their paperwork with a ‘X’ because a cross was easily copied. They would be entering into contracts that would require them to work for several years in order to recoup the costs of their trips to North America. Some people went willingly, while others did not. He gives the example of a Scottish guy who was kidnapped but afterward returned home and sued his assailants. “Thousands of ‘X’s helped build America. Thousands of ‘X’s perished before they could,” he writes.
Today, X has further been accepted as a symbol of fluidity by some queer communities, with genderqueer persons often adopting the honorific ‘Mx.’ instead of choosing from the binary of ‘Mr.’ or Mrs.